China's Offshore Wind Farms in the Doldrums

Despite China's ambitions to promote development of offshore wind power, domestic companies in the industry see little progress on the horizon

The second round of bidding for offshore concession projects, which had been scheduled to start in the first half of 2012, is likely to be put off due to significant delays in the first concession projects," Shi Pengfei, vice-president of the China Wind Energy Association told 'China Daily'.

The second group of concession projects, totaling up to 2 gigawatts, are to be built in Jiangsu, Hebei, Shandong, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces.

According to the National Energy Administration, China will build 5 gW of offshore wind projects by 2015. But Shi said delays may mean missing the target.

China's installed offshore wind power capacity was only 258 megawatts last year, statistics from the Global Wind Energy Council show.. and that was a small share of the global offshore wind power market, although China's onshore wind power capacity is the world's largest reaching almost 63 gW last year, according to data from the council.

In 2010, China awarded four contracts in the first round of bids to construct 1 gW of wind capacity in offshore and inter-tidal (shoreline areas exposed at low tide) concession projects that were to be completed in four years. However, construction hasn't started on the projects.

"A lack of coordination among different government bodies" was one cause of the delays, said Liu Qi, deputy general manager of Shanghai Electric Wind Power Equipment Co, a wind turbine manufacturer.